6/8/12

Obama's Kill List

Obama's Kill List: Silence Is Not an Option

The Editors | June 6, 2012

The silhouette of U.S. President Barack Obama is seen as he sits in
the back of the Marine One helicopter, landing on the South Lawn of the
White House in Washington June 3, 2012. Reuters/Joshua Roberts

The “war on terror” has its own corrupting logic, leading otherwise
morally responsible leaders to do unspeakable things. Such is the case
with the Obama administration’s descent into the world of kill lists and
drone assassinations.
The image of President Obama poring over baseball-card profiles of terror suspects in Jo Becker and Scott Shane’s now famous New York Times
“kill list” exposé probably pleased the administration officials whose
cooperation made the story possible, wrapping the president in glinting
“warrior in chief” election year packaging. For those concerned about
the constitutional protection of civil liberties and the rule of law,
however, that image, and the extraordinary practices it represents, was
profoundly disturbing. The drone policy the president has developed not
only infringes on the sovereignty of other nations, but the
assassinations violate laws put in place in the 1970s after scandals
enveloped an earlier era of CIA criminality. The new details about
Obama’s assassination program also remind us how the 2001 Congressional
Authorization of the Use of Military Force established a disastrous
policy of “borderless and open-ended war that threatens to indefinitely
extend US military engagement around the world,” in the words of the
only member of the House to vote against it, Barbara Lee.
The kill list makes a mockery of due process by circumventing
judicial review, and turning the executive into judge, jury and
executioner. Even worse, the “signature” strikes described in the Times
article, in which nameless individuals are assassinated based merely on
patterns of behavior, dispense with any semblance of habeas corpus
altogether. According to the Center for Constitutional Rights, signature
strikes account for most of the attacks in Pakistan today, and they
were recently approved for use in Yemen.
One of the darkest aspects of this story involves the
administration’s method of counting civilian casualties: The CIA simply
assumes that any military-age male in the vicinity of a terror suspect
must be a militant too. Thus, counterterrorism chief John Brennan was
able to state with a straight face in August 2011 that not one civilian
had perished from US strikes outside Afghanistan and Iraq in more than a
year—a declaration that was greeted with incredulity and outrage in
Pakistan, where witnesses have attested to hundreds of civilian deaths.
The drone strikes are inciting even more anti-American hatred in
troubled places like Yemen as well as Pakistan (see Jeremy Scahill,
“Target: Yemen,” March 5/12). It is hard to argue that they are making
us safer when, for every suspect killed, one or more newly embittered
militants emerge to take his place. This is not a prescription for
American security but for an endless war that will sap our moral core
and put in jeopardy our most cherished freedoms at home.
The new revelations also highlight the dangers of official secrecy,
as we now glimpse some of what the administration was hiding through its
invocation of the state secrets privilege in court proceedings. But as
urgent as the demand for transparency remains, we know more than enough
to conclude that President Obama’s continuation and expansion of George
W. Bush’s “war on terror” has further eroded legal barriers built over
decades to limit executive power. For those who believed Obama would
restore the rule of law after Bush’s imperial overreach, learning the
details of these operations has been troubling. Liberals raised a ruckus
about Bush’s abuses. Silence now is not an option.

Yes, for those who believed Candidate Obama's promise that he would restore the rule of law and prosecute war (and other) crimes of the Bush Administration up to and including President Bush and VP Cheney there was shock and awe as President Obama appeared to completely forget that campaign promise.

While we can sometimes, somehow convince ourselves to accommodate the idea that Presidents and Legislators could now and then in the heat of the moment somehow determine that the "Rule of Law", the strict (limiting) bar of allowance under the Constitution must be at least temporarily set aside to remedy some "emergency" or other, any reasonable person should be able to easily conclude that this simply not only cannot be done - but that the Constitution was enacted, the Rule of Law was established to actually prevent just this sort of behavior regardless of whatever necessary "justification" is presented.

Perhaps we might even grant that our elected representatives, who all take an oath to support and sustain, thus swearing to uphold and obey Constitutional Guarantees and limits could have even forgotten that they are prevented from violating or in any manner circumventing the Constitution and it's limits or prescribed controls on government powers.

Maybe we could even decide that these persons who have sworn this oath to maintain strict allegiance to the Constitution and it's limits on Government - for that is fairly the purpose of the Constitution - to limit and constrain or contain the Government, are perhaps, as unfeasible as it sounds, actually ignorant of the constraints imposed on them by the Constitution and why those constraints are made the Inviolable Law of the Land!

Or we could even decide, based on observable actions and reports, that some officials simply find Constitutional Constraint a nuisance and an obstacle that can simply be ignored as was alleged in 2005 regarding President Bush's reported "comments" regarding the Constitution.

Here is a snippet from FactCheck.org regarding this report, which they claim is unlikely to be true, though it has never been denied in spite of being broadly circulated at the time.
FactCheck itself has been often accused of bias and the fact that they have no "facts" to deny this report of three eyewitnesses, Republican Leaders involved in a White House meeting where violations of the Constitution contained in the about to be proposed "Patriot Act" were being raised seems to me rather odd. I would think that this would be easy to refute if it were not true.
While I found many sources promoting the Bush statement as factual, I could only find one (FactCheck) that went so far as to consider it - not "untrue" - but only "extremely unlikely" as the report came from Capitol Hill Blue - a journal they find left leaning. Because, and only because it came from Capitol Hill Blue, does FactCheck consider the report unreliable.I think it sounds - "just like Bush" - and considering the issue then at hand; the Constitution decimating "Patriot Act", very believable.

"Bush: The Constitution a ‘Goddamned Piece of Paper’?

Is it true that President Bush called the Constitution a "goddamned piece of paper?" He has never denied it, and it appears that there were several witnesses.

The report was posted on Dec. 5, 2005. According to author, Doug Thompson, unnamed Republican leaders complained to Bush during a White House meeting about "onerous" portions of the USA Patriot Act, prompting the following:

“I don’t give a goddamn,” Bush retorted. “I’m the President and the Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way.”

“Mr. President,” one aide in the meeting said. “There is a valid case that the provisions in this law undermine the Constitution.”

Thompson told us he once removed the story from his Web site when others raised doubts and no other news organization came up with a similar story. But he said he later reinstated it and currently believes it to be true. "I wrote the story and I stand by it," Thompson said in a telephone interview.

Thompson told us he based the story on e-mail messages from three persons he knows, all of whom claim to have been present at a White House meeting and to have heard Bush make the statement. He said he finds their account credible: "Sometimes I just have to go with my gut, and my gut tells me he did say this."

This last year especially we have seen an avalanche of "News" that has failed to be reported by "news organizations" and it has become, especially since NDAA, Bradley Manning, etc., that it can be dangerous to report on topics that "Officials" would rather keep silent. and that actual "investigative journalism" is dead; the news being fed to reporters from press conferences that are most often nothing more than press releases, as "investigative" questions are routinely dismissed.

Still, as we have recently seen with issues such as DOMA, NDAA and fears about SOPA, SISPA, wage and health provisions, collective bargaining, voter suppression, municipal takeovers (emergency manager laws) and a host of other proposals., some found to have provisions that have been "officially" Judged Unconstitutional, and provisions of President Obama's Health Care Act so suspect Constitutionally, that the Supreme Court is required to rule on the basic legality of the "law", it is not hard to conclude that Public Officials, even in the Highest Offices in the land, often propose violations of the Rule of Law. The Supreme Court is no less suspect for disregarding Constitutional limitations, considering their own opinions superior to actual Law.

I and I suppose many others find it unacceptable and fitting into the category of those who find the Constitution a non-binding nuisance that a President who before taking public office was a Harvard graduated Professor of Constitutional Law. would unintentionally make blunders regarding conformity to the Constitution.

This means of course that such violations of the Constitution, the Rule of Law, embraced and promoted by Congress, Governors, State Legislatures and even the President and Supreme Court are overtly intentional.

There, I said it (not the first time) - They are breaking the Law on purpose.

How more serious could it get for those entrusted to ensure strict conformity to the Rule of Law, from which there can be no deviation for any purpose, to knowingly, willingly and overwhelmingly conspire to violate that which they have taken supposedly "solemn" oaths to uphold and which forms the foundation of our National Identity and Purpose!

Those who raise the alarm about such Treasonous, Seditious acts by our Representatives in Government are branded as unreliable, subversive, ignorant, dupes and simpletons and at times even claimed to be aligned with enemies of the State (terrorists).

Yet, the proverbial proof "is in the pudding" and cannot be denied.

It seems that an utterly overwhelming majority of our Representatives consider their "Authority" to grant them permission to work around, to degrade, weaken or evade the constraints imposed on government by the Constitution.

There seems to be a fairly general disregard for, often an obvious resentment of the Guarantees of the Constitution to Civil Rights and concepts of Equality, Liberty, Justice and Freedom.

That the majority of our Officials are lawyers, who supposedly know what the law is and are not ignorant of their violations, especially by those, like President Obama, a Doctor (PhD) and Professor of Constitutional Law is just not in any manner acceptable.

The Founders of the United States of America not only gave us a Constitution to protect the people from the abuses of government, they repeatedly warned us that those entrusted with governmental powers would likely be serving vested interests over the public interest and looking for ways to circumvent rather than preserve the intent of the Constitution and the Rights it irrevocably guarantees.

It is common today to hear President Obama referred to as "Bush on steroids" or some other such appellation defining him as someone who has even more disregard for Human and Civil Rights and the Rule of Law than his predecessor.

His calm demeanor and appeal for the common good stand in stark contrast to the "right wing" proponents and practitioners of outright tyranny and defrauding of their office, yet in spite of the spin he gives, his violation of the Law, cannot be ignored, excused or condoned for any reason.

The lessons of history cannot be overlooked, especially the ones that demonstrate that oppressors do not voluntarily cease to oppress. When they control the courts, it becomes the task of "the people" to hold them to account.

This earns the tag of insurrection and we see in other lands how other Oligarchical or Tyrannical Governments deal with citizens who demand Justice and conformity to the Rule of Law.

Obama's "Kill List" is not just a foreshadowing of upcoming practices, very likely it is already in practice here but we fail to see it, hear about it, speak about it and fear to do anything about it.

It is often said that the only thing that saves the USA from slavery is the 2nd amendment - that there is an armed citizenry, but now we see the Government militarizing at a local level, to "out-arm" the citizenry and abusing human and civil rights without little constraint.

The moral and ethical exercise of government is in abject peril in these United States of America.

We need to recognize that what our Government will do to other people, they will also do to us.

There is no justification for setting aside our principles in our interactions abroad.

We cannot "spread Democracy" by the violation of the very principles we claim serve our "best" interests at home.

Be assured, that in some government office, somewhere, is a kill list playing card with your picture on it.

What are you prepared to do to preserve your life and freedom?

Will you violate the Rights of your neighbors to acquire a little presumed safety for yourself?

Will you plug your ears, close your eyes, shut your mouth and pray to be spared?

What will you do when the Wolf sheds his "sheep;s clothing" and comes knocking at your door - or the door next-door?

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.Benjamin FranklinOne has not only a legal, but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.Martin Luther King

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."Abraham Lincoln

“If tyranny and oppression come to this land it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.”James Madison